Taxing games

A sin tax on cigarettes should limit smoking by forcing cash-strapped consumers to buy fewer packs. But even if a sin tax on video games reduces the number of video games sold, it won't necessarily limit the hours played. After all, what's the difference between two hours of "Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance" and an hour each of "Mortal Kombat" and "Killzone 3"?

Hovey says she doesn't worry about it. Adam Hoffer, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, is one of three co-authors of a new working paper examining the creation and growth of the "sindustry"--and why sin taxes often aren't the magic remedy lawmakers hope they'll be. TV shows? Hey, why not an HBO tax? If the state of Connecticut feels strongly that parents should learn about video game addiction and anti-social behavior, Hoffer explains, the state can collect revenue from other sources-- or allocate existing public health funds to the problem.

According to Thomas, the logistics of allotting money from a specific sin tax to a trust for a particular public health campaign can get dicey. States often end up dipping into these funds if they need to make ends meet, and just put an IOU into the pot. In the end, the sin tax could just end up being a run-of-the-mill revenue grab -- a politically correct way to raise money that does nothing to actually reduce gun violence.

As best he can see, the majority of the voting population doesn't play violent video games. It can be used as an interactive lecture demonstration.

The student instruction screen is shown below. Prior to running the simulation, students need to know the following about taxes: Marginal vs. For small classes, the simulation can be used to structure a group or cooperative learning exercise. The decision on which tax rates to choose and why thus becomes collaborative and not individual.

The simulation can be the source for student writing assignments. Require students to submit the summary print out with answers to questions such as: For each of the taxes, explain the choice you made for the tax rates. If relevant, also explain any choices you made for deductions or caps. In other words, why did you choose each number you entered in the simulation. In justifying your choices, please refer to the progressive or regressive impact of each of these taxes.

This is doubly true for the game at max settings, wherein it looks absolutely gorgeous. Its scenic WW2 environments are all fully realized, packed with detail, and more destructible than ever, all thanks to the current iteration of EA DICE's Frostbite engine. Plus, the game supports real-time raytracing with RTX-capable cards, in case you own one of Nvidia's latest and greatest.

Though it's not leaps and bounds greater than Forza Motorsport 7 from a technical perspective, Forza Horizon 4 does amp up the Forza franchise's general beauty. By taking its cars off the racing circuit and onto the roads and open fields of the United Kingdom, Forza is endowed with a whole new dimension of environmental splendor. All the graphical effects of Motorsport 7 are here, with the added benefit of colorful plains, lush woods, snowy mountain tops, and so many other biomes that all add an earthy richness to the franchise's already top-tier weather effects and visuals.

Just be sure your PC has quality specs so that you can get the most out of Horizon 4. No other series besides Crysis has become infamous for being technologically future-proof. And while this trend started with Crysis 1, it didn't stop there. Each game kept on upping the ante until Crysis 3, which remains the most graphically stunning game in the series, and arguably the medium, to this day.

Though it's relatively easy to run on minimum and recommended settings, if you try to get Crysis 3 running at a playable frame rate at 4K with every setting maxed out, you'd better have a fire extinguisher handy. Recommended specs: CPU: 2. While Grand Theft Auto V isn't all that taxing on normal settings, if you crank it up to its absolute highest graphical settings and really lay on the extras 4K textures, high population variety, maximum distance scaling, etc.

If you want computationally intensive mods that turn the cartoonish base game into a near-photorealistic interactive action movie, you're going to need computing horsepower out the wazoo, potentially more so than with any other game on this list. Before you tinker with your copy of GTA V, though, remember that Rockstar is awfully touchy about modding and might ban you from GTA Online if you toy with any component of the game.

Though this game might not be the most gorgeous thing ever when it comes to basic textures, Metro: Last Light Redux augments the visual experience by adding so many effects into the mix that one can't help but be impressed. It utilizes some of the best shaders and lighting technology to ever hit gaming, as well as neat immersion-boosters like fog, frost and even condensation, the latter of which forms on your mask as you trek through the game's world. That sort of technical ingenuity does a great job of enhancing the already-gorgeous experience.

This game's minimum and recommended specs are light, but you can go far with it if your rig sports greater horsepower. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has moments where it shines bright as the prettiest game on this list.

If you overlook some wonky-looking AI characters, the inanimate framework of the game offers a level of detail that's practically new to the industry, with every texture featuring some of the crispest art in the entire medium.

Couple that with the game's overwhelming amount of visual touches, such as atmospheric fog, volumetric smoke and even cloth physics, and Deus Ex: MD is as much of a looker as a modern AAA game can be. With that said, you'll need some intense hardware to get Adam Jensen's hair and coat flowing in the smoke-laden wind at ultra settings, should you want the full experience.

To this day, no Assassin's Creed game has come as close to photo-realism as Assassin's Creed Unity, a game that, when it runs, looks jaw-droppingly gorgeous.

Though the lack of proper optimization was, and to some extent still is, a cause of the hefty hardware this game requires, the majority of the title's requirements stem from its sheer visual caliber. With the massive crowds, god-ray-lighted stained-glass windows of Notre Dame and concealing shadows of grimy Parisian back alleys, this game is a time machine that plops players into an almost lifelike re-creation of the French Revolution.

Though Quantum Break is undeniably a very pretty game, the reason for its ludicrous PC requirements the unofficial ones, mind you — not the bogus, unrealistically low ones that Microsoft claims are due almost entirely to its nightmarish lack of optimization.